If you believe it's in my soul
by thisisnotmybeautifulhouse
Summary: ... I'd say all the words that I know: Spoilers for 2x12 "Master Plan" In which Stiles has always been a girl. After Lydia saves Jackson, Stiles offers the two of them a ride like the bleeding heart she is, and then she just isn't ready to deal with everything that's happened recently, so she decides to do something a little reckless. Derek has other plans.


**I wrote this starting around 10:30 last night, as soon as the little Revelations bit was over, which probably accounts for why it happened at all: I was not expecting this fic. Stiles demanded to be written as a girl, so that's what happened. I don't even - eh. Who knows?**

**Anyway, the pic that goes with this fic is my version of a young girl!Stiles, and yes, it is an image of Winona Ryder from her early days.**

**The title for this comes from Sum 41's ****_Pieces_****.**

* * *

She and Lydia save the day. Or rather, Stiles supplies Lydia with the means to save the day, and then watches her give her heart to Jackson all over again. In spite of the scratches to her baby, Stiles offers to drive the reunited power couple to the destination of their choosing, and ultimately winds up dropping them off at the Martin household, since Lydia's parents are off at a retreat to try one more time to patch up their marriage, and Jackson doesn't feel ready to face his parents. Stiles gets home a little after midnight, and her dad is waiting for her. After an hour of convincing her dad that no, she really doesn't want to give a statement about the three boys from the opposing lacrosse team who supposedly got a little too handsy after the game, and that more than anything, she needs some time alone to work through receiving yet another rejection from Lydia, the good sheriff tells her he loves her and then heads off to bed, concern and exhaustion weighing him down.

Keeping her ears pricked, Stiles waits a full five minutes before sneaking into the bathroom and pulling out the makeup Allison gave her on the night of the winter formal, trying to remember everything the other girl taught her. It takes a ridiculously long amount of time for her to cover up the cuts and bruises Gerard left on her pale skin, along with the bags under her eyes which have become perpetual in the last few months, but eventually, it looks as though the entire night never even happened. There's precious little she can do about her hair, but she does take the time to wet a brush and run it through her short curls, making it look less like a riot and more like the bob it was originally intended to be. She pads as softly as possible back into her room and pulls on another gift from Allison. It's a red dress that looks more like a tunic, stopping several inches higher on her thighs than her shortest pair of shorts, and she nearly chickens out and pulls on some leggings, but talks herself out of it.

She _wants_ to be noticed.

Slipping on her coat and a pair of black flats, she grabs her keys, phone, license, and a wad of cash and then makes for the front door, hardly daring to breathe until it is locked behind her. Nothing can be done about the small _snick_ of her Jeep's door closing, or about the dull _chug-chug-chugging_ of the engine, but her dad's room is toward the back of the house, so it should be fine.

Eying the amount of gas left in her car, she gauges the distance she can travel to and from without getting too close to empty, and heads for the next county over. All her efforts at being stealthy will be for naught if someone mentions seeing her out tonight and her dad gets wind of it.

Thirty minutes later, she's parked in front of a bar that looks promising, music and light streaming out from the windows and the open door. She sits with her forehead pressed to the steering wheel for a good while, debating with herself. Is this really the best plan? Then, she relives the moment where Lydia told Jackson she still loved him, and she shrugs off her coat, stuffing the cash into the bottom of one of her flats and leaving her license under the mat in the floorboard, along with her keys. The odds of anyone realizing her baby is unlocked are slim to none, and after all, the point of this little adventure is to live a little, to be reckless.

Then, she's in the bar, making her way to the space where dozens of people twirl and stomp and clap, and she's grateful that her mother had enough time to teach her how to (sort of) hold her own in a line dance before the leukemia really took hold, because it's almost instinct to let the music and the other dancers tell her body what to do.

It takes even less time than she expects for a young man who fancies himself something of a cowboy, if that stetson is anything to go by, even here in California, to come up and ask her for a dance. It's a pity that his hair is so blonde and his eyes so blue, because she really doesn't want to be reminded of Jackson for another moment tonight, but she lets it go, because this man, at least, is eying her like she's something worth seeing, like she might actually be desirable. So they dance, and they laugh, and they exchange a few words every now and then, and then he asks her if she wants a drink, and she gathers up all her courage and leans up to suggest in his ear, "I was thinking maybe we could go somewhere a little quieter, instead."

His eyes are appreciative as he nods and takes her by the hand, leading her to an outdated truck and then pressing her up against the passenger door, pressing kisses that are just a little too wet, a little too messy into her neck and up to her lips. She gives into it, doing everything she can not to let her inexperience show. She must be doing something right, because the kisses keep coming, and she finally starts to feel that fire low in her belly that she's only felt a handful of times before. Her half-baked plan is coming together beautifully, right up until the man whispers, "Let's go to my place. My parents are gone for the weekend." Stiles pulls back, takes in the lack of stubble on his face, the hint of youthful roundness to his cheeks, and she can't do it. She won't be the reason someone else lies to his parents, won't help someone else screw up.

_"It's you. It's always you, Stiles."_ Yeah, she knows. It is always her. She's resigned herself to being a disappointment to her dad, whether he ever acknowledges it or not - and he never would, because that's just not the kind of man her dad is, which is far better than she deserves - but that does not give her the right to drag anyone else down with her.

"You know what? I actually have to get home. I um - I have work tomorrow, and I can't fall asleep on the job again." Years of pulling lies out of her ass come to her rescue, and although the man (boy, he's just a boy, probably about the same age as her, she can see that now) looks disappointed, he says he understands, and then they part ways, him heading back into the bar, Stiles making her way back to her baby.

The frustrated, humiliated, lonely tears start pouring after the boy disappears, and so she cannot actually see the figure standing between her and her Jeep until she's about five feet away. Finding a seething Derek Hale at the sight of this latest in a long line of events which point to Stiles spending the rest of her life miserable and alone is the final straw, and the tears are joined by sobs, in spite of how hard she tries to hold them back. Her distress seems to break something in Derek, and he comes toward her, wrapping his arms around her shaking form.

It isn't until some of his warmth seeps into her wiry frame that she realizes she is beyond freezing, and so she pushes aside the embarrassment of being caught out and then coddled by Derek. "Guess I can't get mad at you for stalking if you're gonna let me get snot all over your leather jacket, since I'm pretty sure you love it more than you love yourself. What is it about werewolves and leather, huh? Isn't it ironic that you're wearing something that came from a lamb? You're literally a wolf in sheep's clothing, dude."

The exasperated sigh Derek lets out at her babbling is a lot harder to ignore when she can feel it in every part of her. "What were you thinking, Stiles?"

She didn't know until now that she could make anything even resembling a growl, but the knot in her throat is apparently good for something, as the discontented sound she makes when she lifts her head from its place on Derek's chest is pretty much the most threatening thing her little larynx has ever produced. Staring up into his grey-green eyes defiantly, she tells him, "I was _thinking_ that I'm tired of being so alone. I was _thinking_ that after a night like tonight, I don't really want to _think_ at all."

"And so you thought disappearing with some kid you don't even know was the solution? If I hadn't followed you here, no one would even know where you were if something had gone wrong." His brow lowers significantly. "And if I've learned anything recently, it's that with you, Stiles, something _always_ goes wrong."

That's just completely uncalled for. With everything they've done and seen together, all the times she's stuck her scrawny, human neck out for him and his pack, and he just - "No. No, you don't get to come after me and ruin any chance I have of having a bit of fun and then just - just insult me like that. I know everyone looks at me and thinks, 'oh, it's alright to make fun of Stiles. She's got such _heart_, such _pluck._ She can take it,' but I am sick of being everyone's favorite punching bag, okay?"

Derek's eyes close, and she has a just enough time to think that it can't possibly suck that badly to have to look at her face for more than five minutes, before two short, simple words freeze the indignation swelling in her chest.

"I uh - come again?"

"I said, 'I'm sorry.' Although, not about coming after you or your plans falling through."

"Oh." For a moment there, she actually thought Derek was being nice. Which, she supposes, as far as Derek Hale is concerned, he really was. It just stings to know that he's glad she won't be going through with her plan for the night.

He takes in the crestfallen look in her eyes and huffs in frustration. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Ooookay then. You might want to elaborate on that a little bit, 'cause I'm having a hard time seeing any other way you could mean it."

"Your first time shouldn't be something that happens because you'll fall apart if you actually let yourself think about everything that's happened to you lately." His nostrils flare in a way that is far more discrete than Scott's ever have or ever will. "I can smell your self-loathing. You absolutely reek of it, Stiles, and giving yourself to the first guy who shows a bit of interest in you isn't going to make it go away."

The anger this provokes strikes her hard and fast, and she grits out, "Oh, that's really freaking rich coming from you, asshole. You're not exactly a shining example of healthy self-esteem underneath all that testosterone and extra hair, you know that? Face it. I may hate myself, but you are right there with me, buddy."

Instead of firing back at her, he sighs, "I know," and the honesty of it is enough to diminish her anger just as quickly and surely as it came on.

"Oh." She tries to find something else to say, something flavored with her usual wit, but all she can come up with is, "So... what now?"

The drive back to Beacon Hills is filled with a pregnant, yet strangely not-unpleasant silence. She spends about half of it pondering that particular double-negative, and the other half pondering the profile of her unexpected companion, who insisted on driving her, not liking the exhaustion which she clearly could not hide from his heightened senses. Has she mentioned lately that when she isn't busy researching everything about them and finding them awesome, Stiles kind of really hates werewolves?

Derek parks in the exact same place the Jeep was in before she started on her illicit trip tonight, and she decides to ignore the blatant sign that he had been stalking her for even longer than she initially suspected. It's too late to get into an argument about his creeper inclinations, the chance that raised voices might alert her dad too great.

She stumbles out of the passenger side and then he's there, holding her up. "Do you think you can make it up to your room by yourself?"

It says something that she actually has to take a moment to think about it before she can answer his question with a barely convicted, "Yes."

He looks skeptical, but then seems to accept that her ability to go along with his tendency to commandeer her life plans truly does have some sort of limit. His eyes soften, and a look she has never seen in them before cuts through her bone-deep need for sleep, briefly managing to bring back that warmth to her belly that had fled earlier along with her sense of rebellion. "You matter, Stiles. And you're not nearly as alone or unwanted as you think you are."

"Yeah?" Her voice is raspy because of her waterworks from earlier. That has to be it.

"Yeah. And when you're ready to see someone other than Lydia, I'll be here."

Swallowing roughly, she asks, "What if I'm ready right now?"

His lips turn up slightly at each corner, and she feels his chuckles against her cheeks and her neck. "Get some sleep, Stiles." She has another second to hold onto his warmth, which seeps into her even through the coat he made her put back on as soon as they got into the Jeep earlier, before he lowers his face enough to press a chaste kiss to her forehead, and to the bruise on her cheek, still covered in concealer and powder, and then he's gone, fading into the night.

Things are far from perfect, and the thought of Lydia and Jackson definitely still hurts, and undoubtedly will continue to do so for some time, but when she finally snuggles into her pillow that night, she feels at peace.


End file.
